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Streaming MP3 Chunks on ASP.NET

Currently, I have a feature on an ASP.NET website where the user can play back MP3 Files. The code looks something like this:
Response.Clear();
Response.ContentType = "audio/mpeg";
foreach (DataChunk leChunk in db.Mp3Files.First(mp3 => mp3.Mp3ResourceId.Equals(id)).Data.Chunks.OrderBy(chunk => chunk.ChunkOrder))
{
Response.BinaryWrite(leChunk.Data);
}
Unfortunately, if a larger MP3 file is selected, the audio does not begin to play until the entire file is downloaded, which can cause a noticeable delay. Is there any way to get the MP3 to start playing immediately, even though the entire file may not yet be transferred?

You should be able to do what you want by writing to the outpstream of the response, i.e.:
Response.OutputStream.Write
It is also probably a good idea to check previously if Response.IsClientConnected and give up if not.
I found a demo that allows playback of mp3 files from an asp.net web application:
http://aspsnippets.com/Articles/Save-MP3-Audio-Files-to-database-and-display-in-ASPNet-GridView-with-Play-and-Download-option.aspx

try this:
Response.BufferOutput = false; //sets chunked encoding
Response.ContentType = "audio/mpeg";
using (var bw = new BinaryWriter(Response.OutputStream))
{
foreach (DataChunk leChunk in db.Mp3Files.First(mp3 => mp3.Mp3ResourceId.Equals(id)).Data.Chunks.OrderBy(chunk => chunk.ChunkOrder))
{
if (Response.IsClientConnected) //avoids the host closed the connection exception
{
bw.Write(leChunk.Data);
}
}
}
Also, go yo your web.config file and do this if you still have problems with chunked encoding:
<system.webServer>
<asp enableChunkedEncoding="true" />
</system.webServer>
The error you reported above about the host being closing the connection is happening probably because you are opening the page using the browser and when the browser reads the content type, it opens the media player and closes itself who had the opened connection which was then closed, causing that error, so to avoid this, you need to check periodically whether your client is still connected or not.
Finally, I would use a Generic Handler (.ashx) or a custom handler and set a .mp3 extension for this if you are using a aspx page to avoid the unnecessary overhead of the web page.
I hope this helps.

Try setting Response.BufferOutput = false before streaming the response.

If the location of the MP3 files are publicly available to your user then an alternative approach could be to just return the MP3's URL and use the HTML 5 audio tags in your mark up to stream the music. I am pretty sure that the default behaviour of the audio tag would be to stream the file rather than wait until the whole file has downloaded.

One method to support this would be implementing HTTP byte range requests.
By default I don't believe that ASP.NET does this, and definitely won't if using any of the code in the questions or the answer.
You can implement this manually with a little work though. Another option, which would be much less dev work, would be to let IIS serve a static file. I assume that isn't an option though.
Here's an example implementation:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/820146/HTTP-Partial-Content-In-ASP-NET-Web-API-Video

Place Image from DLL onto a web page

I'm so stuck on something i thought would be easy.
I have a DLL that returns an Image object.
I just cant figure out how to display that image on a webpage.
I've tried a few ways, and google a million different variations.
Is it not possible to just bind an Image object to an element on the page like an HtmlImage or a simple img?
Or do i need to convert the Image to a Stream? or a Bitmap? I'm really stuck!
Any help appreciated.....
V

With Asp.Net WebForm, the easiest way is to create a custom ashx file.
In Visual Studio, create a new Custom Handler (I'm not sure of the name of the template in Visual Studio). This will create a .ashx file.
In the code of this handler, write something like (does not have VS under the hand to test the syntax) :
public void ProcessRequest(System.Web.HttpContext context)
{
byte[] raw;
using(var ms = new MemoryStream()){
Image myImage = GetFromDll();
myImage.Save(ms, ImageFormat.Png);
raw=ms.ToArray();
}
context.Response.ContentType = "image/png";
context.Response.BinaryWrite(raw);
}
Then, in your browser, navigate to http://yourserver/app/yourhandler.ashx.
You can if you want add url parameter, and get it from the Request.QueryString collection

It's not as simple as binding. On the client side images are retrieved from the web server as a separate GET request, which means you have to have a URL that resolves to an image. The other option, as Asif suggested, is embedding your image in the HTML as a Base64 string, which is bad practice for shared images (see Steve B's comment).
You either have to provide an URL (route that returns the image file in MVC, or a custom page with proper content type and Response.Write in WebForms), or embed in html.
EDIT:
There is also a third option involving custom HTTP handlers. These have the advantage of bypassing the app framework and serving the content almost directly off the web server, see MSDN.

Convert your image to base64 string and then set it in the <img/> tag.
<img/> can show the image in base64 string.
Alternatively you can save the image and use the path in the <img/>.

Creating a hyperlink to a physical path on the local PC, to files not part of the web site

I have some files in a folder on the harddrive, like C:\ExtraContent\ that has some PDF files. This folder is not part of the website. I was able to successfully upload a PDF to this folder using the default ASP.NET FileUploader, no problem.
What I would like to do is, create a hyperlink that links to a PDF in that folder C:\ExtraContent\somePDF.pdf
I am able to get close using a Button with the following code:
protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
WebClient client = new WebClient();
Byte[] buffer = client.DownloadData("C:\ExtraContent\somePDF.pdf");
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
Response.AddHeader("content-length", buffer.Length.ToString());
Response.BinaryWrite(buffer);
}
The above works in terms of opening the file. But I can't get this to work with an ASP.NET HyperLink.
The reason I want to use a HyperLink is so that the user can choose to right-click and Save As, to download a copy. If HyperLink controls can only link to relative paths, what can I do to get my desired result?
Note: making the files I'm trying to access part of the site is not practical for us.

Basically allowing access to the folder the way you describe is a real security risk (because it requires hacking at the permissions), isn't trivial and in general should be avoided. The way that you achieve your desired behaviour is something along these lines.
Firstly create a blank aspx or ashx page.
Secondly, either in the Page_Load or ProcessRequest you want to use code along the following lines
string filePath = "c:\\Documents\\Stuff\\";
string fileName = "myPath.pdf";
byte[] bytes = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(filePath + fileName);
context.Response.Clear();
context.Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
context.Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.Private);
context.Response.Expires = -1;
context.Response.Buffer = true;
context.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", string.Format("{0};FileName=\"{1}\"", "attachment", fileName));
context.Response.BinaryWrite(bytes);
context.Response.End();
I haven't tested this and taken it from my head so it might need some tweeks but the above code should get you on the right track to cause the persons browser to begin downloading the file you provide.
EDIT: I just realized (after rereading your question) your problem was slightly different to what I thought, to get your issue resolved simply make the hyperlink button you are using link to a page that can process the request as described above. IE: An ashx or aspx page

You need to create a hyperlink to a page that acts as a 'proxy' so that the page will return a response that contains the file stream.
You cannot create a link to a file that is not prt of your site.

HttpHandler to render a png from an array of bytes

Okay, this should be simple, but I just can't get it to work. I have an array of bytes, read from a png file. I'm trying to write a (very) simple HttpHandler to render the image:
context.Response.AddHeader("Content-Type", "image/png")
context.Response.BinaryWrite(bytes)
context.Response.End()
When I open the page in a browser, I just get gibberish,
�PNG IHDR���X��sRGB���gAMA�� �a pHYs���o�d` ...
It's obviously something with the header information I'm doing wrong. Any suggestions?

Try using the ContentType property instead of AddHeader:
context.Response.ContentType = "image/png";
...
Two more diagnostics:
If you use "save" in the browser and save it to a png file, does that render properly?
Use Wireshark to see what's really coming back in the response (which exact bytes etc)

How do i URL rewrite an image properly? C# ASP.NET

I tried several ways to URL rewrite. The first way the image mime was clobbered and was consider an octet stream which didnt allow me to view the image in a browser (unless it was using img src). The 2nd way i wasnt convince it worked. Firefox displayed the img but said the length was 0 (i think it only worked bc it was in my cache).
How do i properly rewrite the image /abc/id/title.png to the internal location /static/user/name/id.png

In ASP.NET I might do something like this:
Response.Clear();
Response.ContentType = profile.AvatarMimeType;
Response.BinaryWrite(profile.Avatar.ToArray());
Where profile.AvatarMimeType is an appropriate mime type for a gif, jpeg, or png.
And where profile.Avatar.ToArray() is a binary content from the db sent out as an array of data!